Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

The 1877 portrait of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (1801–1885) at the National Portrait Gallery documents one of the most celebrated philanthropists and social reformers in Victorian England. Lord Shaftesbury was the driving force behind the Factory Acts that restricted child labour, the Coal Mines Act of 1842, the Lunacy Commission reforms, and numerous other legislative improvements to the lives of the poor. By 1877 he was seventy-six years old and had been a public figure for nearly half a century, universally regarded as the embodiment of Christian philanthropic activism. Collier was twenty-three years old in 1877 and still in the early stages of his career, which makes this an ambitious commission — access to such a significant sitter suggests either recommendation from established contacts or an early demonstration of his abilities that came to the Earl's attention. The National Portrait Gallery commission reinforced the institution's mission to document the great and good of British public life regardless of political or social affiliation. Shaftesbury's image was widely known from earlier portraits and popular prints, and Collier would have been working within an established visual tradition for how this man should look.

Oil on canvas with the careful academic technique of Collier's emerging portrait style. An elderly, greatly distinguished sitter required particular sensitivity: the portrait needed to honour Shaftesbury's immense reputation while maintaining honest physical observation of an old man. Collier's handling of aged physiognomy shows already the control that would characterise his mature work.